


alumni relations

by Regency



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Getting Together, RedVines Day, School Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23740549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regency/pseuds/Regency
Summary: AU. Serena didn’t plan the St. Winifred’s school reunion—not with those hideous ‘decorations’!—but as president of the school’s alumni association she has the privilege of hosting the alumni cocktail mixer where she and the delectable Bernie Wolfe have a chance to get re-acquainted. She’s a very lucky girl.Sequel toa date with destiny.
Relationships: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe
Comments: 24
Kudos: 73
Collections: Redvines Day





	alumni relations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fortytworedvines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortytworedvines/gifts).



> For Fortytworedvines who is an absolute dream and joy to have in this fandom. I hope these gifts brighten up your day, as you have brightened up our fandom.
> 
> I apologize in advance for errors about the UK school system. There was a lot of handwaving. Please forgive my shoddy research.

By the time Bernie was able to get Serena alone again, their retired headmistress had completed her obligatory welcome speech and St. Winifred’s alumni association mixer was in full swing. As president, Serena was schmoozing with their former classmates, rubbing elbows with MPs and corporate mavens, and easily holding her own. Gone was the trace of discontent Serena had revealed to Bernie before they kissed. Serena was velvet-encased steel and Bernie wasn’t merely referring to the fabric of her cocktail dress.

Bernie hung back at the open bar nursing a glass of white wine and studiously avoiding the eye of her former footie teammates. The fewer school acquaintances she had to speak to, the better in her mind. She hadn’t enjoyed being a teenager for reasons that eventually became obvious; she wasn’t keen to relive those days.

The crowd parted once some time had passed, and Serena appeared, a smile lighting her face as soon as she set eyes on Bernie.

“There you are. Is this where you’ve been hiding? I almost sent out a search party.”

“I’m not hiding. I’m simply being circumspect.”

“Likely story. Here.” Serena handed her a small blank contact card.

Bernie flipped it over to read the front in bank. “You want me to fill this out?”

“Ideally.”

“And what will become of my personal information? I won’t end up on some interminable mailing list, will I?” Bernie's inbox was already a wasteland of correspondence she wouldn't be answering, no reason to exacerbate the situation.

“No, I hate those myself. You’ll just get the odd yearly circular announcing networking opportunities and special events held by the school. Fundraising drives and the like. Availabilities for breakfast with certain interested parties.” Serena walked her fingers up Bernie's sleeve, the contact an intimate invitation Bernie had every intention to accept.

“Would you be one of those interested parties?”

“Very much one, yes. Would you care to have me for breakfast?” Serena slipped into Bernie's sphere, perfume and perfectly applied lipstick, eyes daring and beseeching. Bernie couldn't think of one place else she'd care to be.

“I’d like you for every meal, Ms. Campbell.”

“I think that can be arranged.” Serena checked over her shoulder. “I’m free for the moment. Why don’t you come be circumspect with me?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Serena took Bernie's hand, unshakable in her certainty that Bernie would follow her anywhere she chose. She knew her quarry well. Bernie would follow that smile into a mine field. In a way, she was.

They snuck out of a side door into the breezy St. Winifred courtyard. It was crisp, nearing to cold and neither had thought to bring a coat.

Bernie offered Serena her blazer, and Serena only laughed.

"I'm much more interested in getting off clothes than get any more on." There was a tree they passed just then, decades old and reaching towards eternity, that would have been perfect to kiss Serena against, to kiss her come hither mouth and caress the curves that seemed to call Bernie by name. But it was much too cool out for that.

Serena led her to the unoccupied administrative building of their old school, and they hurried inside. At this hour of night, it was an empty, echoing structure, no longer the Titan of intimidation it had been when its inhabitants seemed to control their young fates.

Their footsteps echoed in the corridors. They moved by muscle memory, taking the central staircase and then turn after turn till they neared the administration's inner sanctum drenched in out of date wood paneling and newly installed glass walls. Serena led and Bernie played the good little soldier till curiosity got the better of her.

“Where are we going?”

“The pastoral care office. There’s a cot in there we might have use for.”

“Did they have a pastoral care office when we were here?”

“Nope. But girls need a bit more TLC than you and I needed. Well, we probably could have done with some, but it wasn’t considered the done thing in the ‘80s. We know better now.”

“You aren’t on the Board of Regents, by chance?”

“I’m on many boards, committees...taskforces.” Easy to believe. Serena hadn't been happy unless she got to vet every committee decision personally. What had made her an unparalleled leader had rendered her an unpopular teammate when it came to group work. Bernie hadn't had the pleasure.

"Do you ever slow down?"

"Why would I? There's much to do and someone's got to do it."

"There's the Head Girl I remember."

"Careful, keep up that cheek and I might decide not to kiss you after all."

"We can't have that."

"You're right, we can't." She coaxed Bernie onward with a curled finger. "Come along, Bernie. I have plans for you."

Bernie pursed her lips to disguise her smile. "So do I.”

"A regular action woman. I like that." _'I like you'_ went unsaid yet filled the arm's length of space between like helium, filling Bernie's chest ‘til Bernie was dizzy. All her life had been leading to a dark building and a beautiful woman, this beautiful want. Nothing to come was a mystery to her, only everything she'd overlooked before.

“You have questions?” Serena asked her when she'd gazed too long. They resumed their walk, lit by dim security lights and desk lamps shining out from reinforced glass.

“One or two.”

“Go on, don’t be shy.” Their palms pressed together, their fingers a knit if something lasting if Bernie's thinking wasn't wishful.

“Well…I didn't know women were in your wheelhouse.”

"I don't really have a preference, which I suppose is how bisexuality works most of the time. I’ve never given it much thought.”

“If I'd known that back in school, I might have got my courage up and asked you out."

"I used to wonder if you fancied me. My closest friends swore you did. I just assumed you were shy."

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other. You tied me up in the worst knots."

"Remember when we were assigned to compete together in the three-legged race?”

"I tripped over a rock on the ground on my way over to you and twisted my ankle. I couldn't run in the track meet that weekend."

"St. Winnie's had an appalling showing without their best runner. I got nasty messages from your supporters under my door for a month."

"I never heard anything about that."

Serena gave a philosophical shrug. "You weren't to know. I still thought they were wrong about what you felt for me. You wouldn't have been the first student to call me a bully or judge me as intimidating. I assumed I made you nervous and tried to make things easier on you. Telling you about the notes wouldn't have helped."

"I fancied the pants off you, Serena."

Serena sent her simmering look. "I sure would have let you try. God knows every year ten and above at St. Regis thought he was in with a chance."

"You had them on a short leash."

"Some of them were sweet and respectful, some were right wankers, and others just needed a girlfriend to introduce to their parents to hide their boyfriends." Bernie squinted. Serena touched her neck. "I told you I wouldn't have minded, Bernie." 

“So you didn’t date all the boys?” Not that Bernie would have minded. She wasn't one to judge.

“Alas, no. Missed out on a dishy few, too. Don't be fooled, I had my fun. Just not quite as much as the rumor mill implied." Her smile grew. “I did, however, date quite a few of the girls from around town.” Bernie has missed out. “Try to contain your shock. Variety is the spice of life. imagine if I didn't get to have you.” She sauntered forward.

"Here's our stop." Serena produced a key to get them inside the enclosed office with 'Pastoral Care' stenciled on the door. This room was all solid walls; for privacy was Bernie's guess

The walls were covered in informative postings about reproductive health, nutrition, anti-bullying, dating violence and mental information. First aid supplies were neatly arrayed on locked shelves to the left and menstrual supplies and dogeared paperbacks shared bursting bookshelves with fuzzy woolen blankets and well-used painted biscuit tins to the right.

"She shares the space with the school nurse. It's a work in progress getting them separate suites. Neither has offered so much as a complaint. I rather think they've taken to each other."

Two desks faced each other in the center of the office. A cot sat in a small, out-of-the-way room behind the nurse's desk. A worn, overstuffed two-seater occupied a corner by the hearth. The office was warm and full of care. Bernie would have come here if she'd had no place else to go. She'd come here again were she invited.

"This was you, wasn't it? This office was your idea."

"What gave me away?"

She counted off the clues on her fingers. "You wanted me to see it. You had a key. You know your way around."

"Happenstance."

"You wanted to share it with me."

Serena skimmed a nervous hand down the back of her neck. "I can't help if you bring out my sentimental side."

She fetched a floral biscuit tin off the shelf and helped herself to its contents. When Bernie relieved her of the tin, their hands touch a hushed whisper. Bernie took a bite that shouted cinnamon sugar richness.

Serena thumbed brown sugar from Bernie's lip and licked it from her fingertip. "Knew you'd make it even better."

Bernie would never taste that combination again without Serena entering her thoughts. Serena's touch, Serena skin, Serena's husky, vixenish chuckle zipping across her memory, fleeting as a lightning strike, easily as deadly.

Serena examined the suite with the eye of an administrator and the touch of art connoisseur, gentle and exacting. Like she touched Bernie when she wasn't kissing Bernie senseless, stealing Bernie eyes, ears, and taste, till all Bernie knew was her.

Bernie perched on the nurse’s desk, seduced despite the distance between them. Serena needn't touch Bernie to have her utterly in her thrall. "I used to think you were some kind of wanton sex goddess."

Serena had ceased her stroll through the inventory to recline on the sofa in the corner, stocking-clad legs crossed at ankle, and looking every bit comfortable and at home in their strange surrounds. “What makes you think I’m not?”

She lifted a knee ever so and her the hem of her dress rose to meet the challenge. Bernie's eyes rose to meet the view. The calves of a surgeon hours on her feet in theatre flexed under her attention. Bernie wet her lips.

“Didn’t want to be presumptuous.”

“I was the one who kissed you not five minutes we reunited. I’d wager I’m the presumptuous one.”

Bernie laughed out loud, unembarrassed when Serena rolled onto her back to join in. Her laugh was as filthy as her voice in seduction, as instantly beloved as she'd been again at first sight. “That’s who you’ve always been—confident of how loved you’d be. The rest of us merely followed your lead.” Bernie was still that girl grown, the seed of her infatuation germinating in this very room at the sunlight Serena shone.

Serena propped her head on her hand. “Far be it for me to challenge your theory, but I'd love to know what made you think that.”

“Everyone loved you.” Bernie had loved her.

“Not even most of everyone.”

“I thought we all felt the same way: You were so confident. You knew just where you belonged.”

“I knew where I wanted to be: In the lead.”

“I thought they all stared at you like I did.”

Serena sat upright, folding a leg underneath her.

“Some of them talked to me, even. I wanted you to talk to me.” Old longing bled into the new. They had been wanting the same things. The years had carved their yearnings deep and built them in the image of it.

“I thought about what you must have done all the time. I didn't know anything, so I dreamt of everything.”

"Did you fantasize about me?" Serena stood and shook the wrinkles from her dress. Her approach was a slow and measured stroll; she knew Bernie would be waiting. Wanting.

Though Bernie laughed at her question, it was all nerves. "Red light, Ms. Campbell."

"Green light, Ms. Wolfe. Carry on." She nudged Bernie onto the desk and pushed her legs apart to make room for herself. Bernie's nerves erupted in heat. Wanting was a beast thoroughly trumped by having. Here was Bernie roundly defeated.

Serena walked her fingers up Bernie's pearl buttons. "Tell me what you dreamed about me."

“Nothing very salacious. I didn’t know enough to know what I should fantasize about.”

The intimate knowledge she’d gained since flooded the forefront of her mind. She knew what she wanted now. She propped herself up on her hands lest she tip backward.

Serena popped a button on Bernie’s shirt and kissed the exposed skin. Bernie sucked in a shaky breath. Serena’s laughter raised chill bumps on her chest. “I don’t believe you. Young, hormones raging, thinking of a pretty girl you’d like to kiss. Don’t tell me you thought about chaste hugs and handholding.”

She loosened another button, kissed her with parted lips, tongue flitting out for an indulgent taste. Bernie’s stomached tightened and she swallowed back a whimper. “Did you fantasize about us in the infirmary alone together? Popping my buttons and stripping me out of my tights?”

“Sometimes…”

Serena freed her shirttails from her waistband of her trousers and flicked the last of her buttons free.

“Maybe sneaking out of mass together for some personal enrichment?” She cupped one of Bernie’s breasts through her bra.

Bernie tightened her thighs around Serena. She’d meant to soothe the growing ache between her legs, but Serena’s closeness only heightened it.

Bernie pulled her by her neck into a kiss that put their first to shame. Lips clashing and hands grasping. Bernie could be patient, but she had waited decades; this was the fruits of her patience won. Bernie caught Serena’s wrists in one hand between them and pulled her forward till she was balanced on her toes to reach Bernie’s lips.

“I thought about you all the time.” Bernie kissed the corner of her mouth. Serena kissed her back. “You distracted me. Your shampoo distracted me.” She teased the ends of Serena’s short hair. “Your skirts distracted me.” Bernie slid a hand under Serena’s skirt, learning the topography of her knees and thighs, the shape of Serena underneath her clothes. Serena’s breath quickened. Her eye dilated black, dark and reflective, in arousal. She shifted, making room for Bernie’s touch to roam where warm flesh met satin and lace.

Serena twisted free of her grasp to grab Bernie by her jacket. “Come here.” Bernie followed her lips and the rasp of her voice to the loveseat, a perfect name for what they had in mind. They were too much woman combined for the cozy two-seater but want made due.

Serena stripped Bernie of her jacket and shirt. “I used to watch you run during practice meets. I’d argue with anyone who said you weren’t the best on the lanes.” Serena swept a thumb over her bra-covered nipple, and it puckered against her palm.

Bernie turned a whimper into a growl and set upon her. She could kiss Serena for days. She made quick work of Serena’s side zipper. Serena got up to strip down. She’d dressed to impress down to her skivvies. Bernie was terribly, wonderfully impressed.

“Leopard print?”

“Leopard print.” She sounded proud of herself and by god, she had quite a bit to be proud of.

“Lucky me.”

They undressed each other to nothing, skin on skin, lips and hands. Dreams had nothing on Serena when she touched Bernie.

“I thought about your legs all the time. How it would feel to touch them, to touch you.”

Serena tangled her legs through Bernie’s till they were positioned just right. Molten against strong thighs, all intent. “I couldn’t stop thinking about getting you alone even when I didn’t know just what that would entail. I’d see you and this yawning ache would open up in the pit of my stomach. Didn’t take me long to realize what it was I needed when I felt like that. Wanting you kept me awake many a night.”

“Don’t stop now.”

“Couldn’t if I tried.”

The minutes and hours ticked past and they only saw each other. Felt each other. Found each other. Finally.

They lay tangled in an itchy blanket as the room grew cold and sweat dried on bare necks and slick thighs. They were propped on one of the armrests, a meager concession to the fact their legs were simply too long for the sofa, but they couldn’t yet be arsed to move. Their bodies would rail at them in the morning; they decided tonight was worth the future punishment.

Bernie drew shapes in the sweat evaporating from Serena’s skin. Serena shivered and drew closer to her heat, her hands. Her.

“Delectable,” Bernie said aloud, giving voice to the compliment stirring inside her sex-fogged mind. Serena Campbell was delectable.

“Oh?”

“Edible.”

“Keeping with the cannibalism theme. Am I food now?”

“I’d certainly love to put you in my mouth.” There hadn’t been room or time, and Bernie intended to make a mess of Serena when she had both. Best to do it elsewhere.

Serena sniggered. “Next time, darling.”

Bernie swallowed her thrilled response. _Next time._

“All right, okay. I’ve just thought of it.”

“What? What’ve you thought of?”

“The perfect word to describe you. _Bodacious._ ”

Serena began chortling full-out. “You are a strange woman, Berenice Wolfe. I supposed that's always been my type.”

"Strange?"

"You."

Bernie kissed any skin she could reach. Now she was allowed, she wanted to mark every inch of Serena as her own. A flag planted on a sacred place— _I was here. Can you believe I was here?_

“I wish I’d known how you felt when we were young. I’d have been so brave for you.”

“Joining the army was more than brave.”

Serena combed her hands through Bernie’s hair, tending her like something loved.

“Braver, then.”

“If you say so.” She leant in for another kiss. Bernie was drawn from the experience of her lips by the tolling of the clocktower. It had just struck eight. “Shouldn’t we be getting back?”

“I brought my assistant Morven along. She’s tenacious; nobody will be leaving without turning in their contact details. She was Head Girl here, too, eight years ago.”

“Do you all know each other?”

"Yes, all the former Head Girls have joined forces to rule the world. It’s very simple: as head of the Alumni Association, every one of their names crosses my desk when they’re applying for the alumni endowment on their way to university. I reach out to them and if they’re amenable, mentor them. It never hurts to have friends in high places.”

“Is there anything you can’t do?”

Serena sobered. “Many things. But let’s not ruin the moment, hmm?” They continued to enjoy each other in the ways the small sofa would allow until an irritating noised filled the room sometime later. “That will be Morven,” Serena sighed. It had just gone half nine. “It’s almost the close of evening. We have to go.”

“I thought the fairytale ended at midnight.”

“My fairy godmother is on secondment, I’m afraid.” She stared ninat Bernie, uncertainty and adoration coloring her expression. “But I found my prince charming, so not all bad.”

“Is that it? Do we leave here and out go our separate ways till the next reunion?” Bernie wanted more than that. She had for a long time. Unlike the girl she used to be, she wasn’t accustomed to missing out on what made her happy. Major Berenice Wolfe had learned to fight like hell.

Her subsequent diatribe was interrupted by Serena twisting into her lap, her generous thighs bracketing Bernie’s hips on top of their borrowed blankets.

“I hope not, Major, since I plan to take you home with me—unless you object.”

Bernie exhaled, unwilling to admit she’d been ginning up to convince Serena to do just that. Maybe she didn’t need to bring the fight home with her.

“No objections.”

“Good woman. Come here.” She curled her fingers to draw Bernie in, and Bernie gulped. She wouldn’t be forgetting what those fingers were capable of any day soon.

“Are you going to order me to ‘heel’ next?” she only half-joked.

“Only if you’re badly trained.” Serena raised an eyebrow that promised pleasure aplenty. “Don’t worry, Bernie, I’ll get you shipshape.” Heaven only knew what _that_ would entail. Bernie couldn’t wait.

She swatted Serena on her comely backside just to hear her yelp.

“Not if I get you first.”


End file.
